Israel's Netanyahu speaks peace -- with US Democrats

WASHINGTON -- Israel should work with Palestinians to improve security and economic issues but leave thorny political decisions and the status of Jerusalem for another time, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

“I don’t know if we can solve the political problem right now, and President Obama has his own doubts as well,” Netanyahu said a day after meeting with the U.S. president at the White House. “At the very least, we can work on security and prosperity. And then we can sit down and talk.”

“On the question of Jerusalem and specifically the Temple Mount, I think it’s insoluble. I just don’t see right now a solution,” Netanyahu said. “I think it has to remain under Israel’s control to prevent it from exploding.”

Netanyahu spoke at the liberal Center for American Progress, in an effort to smooth over hard feelings among Democrats and progressives over his aggressive lobbying during the past two years against the Iran nuclear agreement, Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievement. On Monday, Netanyahu was honored by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank whose analysts were critical of the deal with Iran.

Netanyahu’s efforts to derail the agreement were so divisive that he turned down an invitation in February to meet with Democratic senators concerned that divisions between Democrats and Republicans were undermining bipartisan support for Israel.

“I’m here in the spirit of reconciliation between the political parties,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Later Tuesday, Netanyahu visited and posed for pictures with Democratic and Republican Senators at the U.S. Capitol.

Jane Harman, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Democratic Congresswoman from California, said she was surprised and pleased that Netanyahu visited the liberal group, but disappointed in his message on peace.

“Losing a rock solid bipartisan coalition here in the United States would be a disaster for Israel,” Harman said. On the peace process, however, she worried about Netanyahu’s lack of optimism.

Greg Rosenbaum, chairman of the Jewish Democratic Council, said “American Jews support a progressive Israel,” and that “there was no better place that the prime minister could have come in terms of reconciliation with the American Jewish community.”

Netanyahu seemed to tailor his talk to the audience. He referred multiple times to a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, attempting to put to rest any doubts about his intentions after campaign comments he made last spring that he later disavowed. And he spoke openly about wanting to put the recent disagreements in the past.

A representative of the hawkish Likud party, Netanyahu pointed out that while he may be “right wing” because he supports a strong defense, Israel is “progressive” on many issues.

After moderator Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, told Netanyahu that many Americans were taken aback by his warning before the elections last spring that Arabs voters would go to the polls in droves, he backed away from those comments and talked of how he called Arab-Israeli leaders to his office and pledged to serve all of Israel’s citizens, including Arabs.

When Tanden pointed out that women always played a prominent role in Israel’s military, Netanyahu pointed out that they also serve in combat, and as jet fighter pilots. And he implied that the United States has finally caught up with Israel on gays in the military.

“You had ‘Don’t ask don’t tell,’” he said. “In Israel, our policy is ‘We don’t care.’”

Netanyahu spoke as Israel contends with a new wave of violence that began in early September amid provocative statements by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders regarding the status of the holy site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al Sharif.

Palestinian analysts, such as Hussein Ibish of the Gulf States Institute in Washington, say much of the violence is a result of frustration with a peace process that has gone nowhere in years. Netanyahu blamed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for refusing to meet with him for more than six hours during the past seven years, while the region descends into chaos.

Palestinians look around the region and see the danger of weak governments that cannot maintain security, Netanyahu said, pointing at failed states such as Syria, Yemen and Libya, and at Egypt, which is fighting an insurgency that includes a powerful faction of the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula on Israel’s southern border.

While a political solution to the Palestinian issue is not at hand, it’s best to focus on improving economic conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said.

“My position is let a thousand economies bloom,” he said. “It’s not a political solution, but it helps that people in Ramallah in Gaza don’t feel they live on the edge of a precipice."